The signatories of this letter propose to award the "Prize for Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel" for the year 2001 to SILVIO GESELL (1862-1930) posthumously.

Reasons:

More than any other scientific field the economic sciences are orientated towards the needs of the society. Consequently economists have a high responsibility towards society. The Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences should only be awarded to economists whose works show a high degree of social responsibility.

The works of Silvio Gesell fulfill these requirements in an outstanding degree:

His Collected Works (18 volumes, issued by the Publishing Company for Social Economy in Lütjenburg/Germany) show that the main intention of Gesell was to deliver the economic fundamentals for social justice and consequently for civil and international peace.

Especially in his book "Die Natürliche Wirtschaftsordnung durch Freiland und Freigeld", first published in 1916 (Collected Works, Vol. 9), Gesell has convincingly proved that everybody needs free access to land ("Freiland") and money ("Freigeld") in order to make free use of his abilities and to establish a free and social economy ("Freiwirtschaft") in cooperation with others.

Gesell was the first economist who saw that Freiwirtschaft can only be realized, if land and money are common property administrated by the state.

These measures make private income from land-leasing and money-lending without working impossible. Instead the state provides free access to land and money for everybody who is ready to work. This enables a humane participation in community life, according to personal ideas, abilities and achievements.

The fundamental element of the land reform proposed by Gesell is the change of the private right of ownership to a private right of use (= usufruct). The public income gained by leasing of land and natural resources goes into the treasury of the state and is used, according to Gesell's idea, for the education of children.

The fundamental element of the monetary reform proposed by Gesell is that the public exchange medium 'money' has to be created only by a state-owned currency office ("Währungsamt"). The minister of finance would then enter the money debt-free and interest-free into the monetary cycle. The money supply is controlled by the currency office on the base of price indices, and the circulation of money is guaranteed by levying a charge on hoarded money. Both means guarantee a long term price stability.

Furthermore, Gesell has clearly recognized and emphasized that in order to guarantee the Freiwirtschaft all goods produced by human work have to be private property.

Had Gesell's reforms been carried out, the unjustified private interest income without work from money, land and natural resources would have been made impossible. Furthermore, the fatal exponentially accellerating transition of money from labour to capital by the effect of compound interest would have been stopped. It is exactly this process that, in every country of the world, has caused a small, increasingly rich top layer and a broad, increasingly poor bottom layer of society. During the past century this process has essentially contributed to the origin of two world wars and numerous other civil and international wars, and it has remained a disruptive factor for civil and international peace.

To have been the first to develop both the theoretical principles and the practical measures for overcoming this inhuman economic and social order, is Gesell's outstanding scientific, economic and social achievement.